Time in Australia

To find the current local time in Oceania, click on any country in Australia below. All the
Australian country names are listed alpahbetically. You will see that all Oceania
or Australia
Country Time Clock pages have a Green background to identify that the country is
in the continent of Oceania. The green colour represents Oceania in the Olympics
Flag also.

Time in Australia (Antarctic Territories)

Time Zones in Australia

Australia uses basically three main Standard Times. These three
Australian Standard Times are used and regulated by the individual state
governments. Some governments also promulgate DST or Daylight Saving Time.
The external territories however may observe different time zones. The three
main Australian Time Zones are as below:-

Australian Western Standard Time AWST (UTC+08:00)

Australian Central Standard Time ACST (UTC+09:30)

Australian Eastern Standard Time AEST (UTC+10:00)

History of Time in Australia

The history of time in Australia goes back to 1890's when Dominions
adopted it. Until then each locality was given free hand to regulate and
switch their standard time zones. In fact each city or town was free to
determine its local time called the Local Mean Time. But all that has
changed and Western Australia uses the Western Standard Time, the South
Australia and the Northern Territory use the Central Standard Time. The
states of New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland and the Australian
Capital Territory ACT use the Eastern Standard Time.

DST or Daylight Saving Time in Australia

The DST or Daylight Saving Time is used in New South wales, Victoria,
South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. DST is not
being used at this time in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western
Australia. The governments have the powers to establish a DST and in 1968
Tasmania became the first state in peace time to use DST which was later
followed in 1971 by New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia
and Australian Capital Territory. Somehow Western Australia and Northern
Territory did not adopt DST. In 1972 Queensland also stopped using DST but
do use it ocassionally on trial basis. Starting with 12 April 2007, New
South wales, Victoria, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory came to
an agreement to have a common beginning and ending DST dates with effect
from 2008. The DST starts from the first Sunday of October and ends on the
first Sunday in April.

Standardisation of Time in Australia

The standardisation of time in Australia was started in 1892 whe the Six
Dominions Surveyors met in Melborne for the Intercolonial Conference of
Surveyors, where in the delegates accepted the recommendations of the 1884
International Meridian Conference to adopt the GMT or Greenwich Mean Time as
the basis for a Standard Time in Australia. During this conference some
mis-communication also is known to have happened because of which the South
Australia ended up with a half hour time zone. However, the final Dominions
enacted the time zone legislation in 1895 and in February that year the
clocks were set eight hours ahead of the GMT in Western Australia, nine
hours ahead of the GMT in South Australia and Northern Territority and ten
hours ahead of GMT in the Queensland, New South Wales, the Dominion of
Victoria and Tasmania. Amazingly the Broken Hill in the far west of New
south Wales adopted Central Standard Time because at that time it was not
connected to Sydney by rail road but had a rail road to Adelaide. In May
1899 South Australia in a bid to standardise time further, advanced the
Central Standard Time by 30 minutes but disregarded the common international
practice of one hour interval between any two adjecent time zones. Later
they tried to correct these odd time zones in 1986 and 1994 which were
rejected.